I know the French love new trends and maybe choc-chip cookies are 'cool', but I'm very chauvinistic about these. Disclosure: I'm not a chocolate chip cookie connosisseur. I'll eat a chocolate-chocolate chip before I go for the classic. My fav is at Cafe Petrossian but they were cleaned out by 2 pm on Saturday (and they're a FRENCH cafe). Even mass-market Whole Foods cookies look better than the Fr samples. Wish I'd gotten the pumpkin-walnut.

Union Sq. Farmers Market gets them right.

Laura Todd is a huge very clever chain that introduced choc chips to France. I broil when I see their stands at the salon du chocolat or Galeries Lafayette Gourmet. Grrrrr

HMPH

Did you know New York cheese cake is big in Paris?

Fortunately our pound cake (or is it British) they will never get but that's another post...

Why the French can't be satisfied making the most seductive pastry on the planet.

26 comments:

The reason chocolate chip cookies turn out "differently" when made in France is that French flour is different...from the source to the mill--it will not produce the same puffy and chewy cookie as American flour.

You have to truly play around with the flour/butter proportions when baking from an American recipe. It's not just a matter of converting US to metric.

It's best, in the end, to leave the cookies to the US bakers, and the eclairs, etc, to the French ones.

My favorite choc chip recipe is from Cooks Illustrated and it can be made, shaped and frozen so that a fresh hot cookie is only 10 minutes of preheating the oven and 25 minutes of baking time away...and my freezer ALWAYS has a bag of cookies ready to bake. I alternate between the Toll House chips and Valrhona chopped up. I now consider it my patriotic duty to uphold the tradition of the true American chocolate chip cookie! Carol, you keep "research" covered; I'll cover the chocolate chips!

This post reminds me that I'd better get in gear to make my Dad his annual Christmas present of 18 dozen of his favorite chocolate chip cookies. Which he calls "lard biscuits." Which contain, in each batch, a cup of shortening AND a cup of oil.

And which he puts in the freezer in a container that LOCKS so nobody else can steal them.

Ah, those cheeky French people! How dare they try and make the all-American chocolate chip cookies-- and poorly at that!? I tell you what: French Girl in Seattle will immediately email/text/write/call all of the suppliers you listed above as soon as all the "French-labeled" - and cardboard-tasting baguettes/croissants/pains au chocolat, etc. have been removed from Seattle's bakeries and supermarket aisles. Deal?! -- Veronique (French Girl in Seattle)

Seeing those two Frenchies casting the chocolate female reminds me of when my son and I did a body cast of his 7 month pregnant partner, from head to mid-thigh. He took her left side, I took her right, and we slathered the plaster onto her nude body, really fast.Mmmm...maybe her negative mold is waiting to be filled with gallons of chocolate, for the holidays...?Naaaaa.

I totally agree the cookies that were sampled in the raid did not look at all like authentic American cookies (I wish you were here for this raid!), so the subject was not at all "French cookies are better than American" but "where to find the best cookies in Paris" :) For sure I have to go to NY to taste the ONES :)

PS: Cafe Petrossian recipes were made by Philippe Conticini from the Pâtisserie des Rêves :)

Wow, how patriotic!You hit a nerve, Carol, we all love chocolate chip cookies, but not French ones!I've never had a French chocolate chip, so I can't compare them. But I will certainly take your word for it!

Nothing like the original Toll House!!! I did add some Kraft caramel bits ( not the chocolate chip shaped ones of another brand ) ,left from making another not yet perfect macaron attempt,into a batch of chocolate chip cookies. Now they are my DH fave! those French ones don't look done. Let them stick to what they do best!